Crossfade
by antepathy
Summary: Skystalker awakes after a tragic injury as Flatline's latest experiment. He can't forget who he once was, and he's assigned to work with a mech who can't remember: Mindwipe. Slash, pnp. Wow, these characters don't even show! I r obscure!


A/N Another one of those huh? fics I just had to write but...by all means feel free to ignore. Based (through long and bizarre chain of events) on this image (please as per usual, delete spaces):

www. seibertron. com / energonpub / download / file. php ? id = 18584&t = 1 That should work.

More or less a story about memory, involving a pairing that hasn't left me alone since I saw that picture. Because yeah, being obsessed with toys is like...totally normal.

I'm not begging for reviews or anything (I hope you know I'm not one of those fic-ransommers--give me reviews OR ELSE!), but if you have ideas of what you'd like to see in continuations (it works pretty well just now as a standalone), I'd love to hear your thoughts. And the characterizations here are totally not-canon: I just figured I wrote enough hollow psychopaths (those who know me on LJ know what I'm talking about, if not, feel free to ask!) and I should try something different. Fluffy!Mindwipe? Yeah. That's sure...different!

Warning: slash, pnp

* * *

"The damage was…extensive," Flatline said, his voice, as ever, clinical, cool. Mindwipe wondered if Flatline considered other mechs to be, well, _real, _as in more than just merely experimental systems he had yet to toy with. "Using the spark splitting advancements I made with the Autobot Arcee unit, we were able to salvage Skystalker."

Mindwipe's optics flicked to the repair cradles. Plural. Skystalker, who had once been almost Mindwipe's own size, now split into two diminutive frames.

"Why split?" Was he always two? No. Mindwipe knew this. That was in long-term memory cache. Skystalker had been a lightweight harrier/fighter. Fast, maneuverable. You remember this, he told himself. You remember.

Flatline looked torn between being pleased that someone asked him a question and being irritated that he had to explain. "The spark's integrity had been compromised. In one piece it was unstable—the shifting polarities of…," he saw that Mindwipe's face had gone blank. Sighed. "His spark needed to be split or it would have torn itself apart."

Mindwipe nodded. "All right, so…why do you need me?" He remembered—he thought—being ordered here. Why else would he be here? Were he and Flatline…friends? That didn't seem quite plausible.

"It is possible," Flatline said, his mouth folding into an uncomfortable tight line, "that the mental stability of the split sparks may be…unreliable. Should this be the case with Skystalker, we may require your unique abilities."

"To restrain him?" Erm, them? Mindwipe looked worriedly at the vacant frames. Who? Oh, Skystalker. Both of him. Had there always been two?

"No. Instability would be permanent. We would require you simply to wipe all traces of personality programming. Almost," he gave a vague handwave, "starting them again from dronelings."

Oh, is that all, Mindwipe thought, wryly. Just…destroy a mind. He had known Skystalker before and it somehow seemed wrong to erase a personality he knew. Skystalker had been brash, arrogant, and in complete denial of his own physical limitations. What would he be like now, split into two small, friable forms? He hoped this speculation was enough to push the matter into his long term cache.

"Do you understand?" Flatline asked, his voice harsh. He was unused to—like any of them weren't—having to deal with Mindwipe's weakness. It was hard, even for Mindwipe, to consider it a mere…quirk.

"Yes."

"Say it back." Something in Mindwipe's memory core suggested that Flatline must have been briefed about this part. This was familiar. Just as opening a red command shell and inputting the data was familiar.

"If he is unstable, I am to delete his programming."

"Fine," Flatline said. "I shall wake him up."

**

Skystalker felt hot. That was the first sensation he registered. Heat, as though his core temperature were close to red line. He didn't seem able to online his orientation systems, just yet. That happened, he told himself, after a full medical shutdown. Nothing to be alarmed about.

Well, other than the fact you'd required a full medical shutdown.

He tried to remember: what the frag had happened? An aerial run over Simfur, right? Ground-to-air flak—he remembered the black poofs blossoming like tulle around him in the sky. He remembered the sudden burst of pain—white and red—across his sensornet, the disturbing sensation of air whistling through a hole torn in his fuselage, wind-whipped cold against the injured heat, the sparking damaged circuits. He remembered the strange prickling of the damaged circuits, the high hot pinching of energon striking bare current-carrying wires. And he remembered, finally, spinning helplessly, thunderously out of control toward the ground—the grid of Simfur's city layout racing up to meet him, the hard crunch of the metal of his frame and then, horribly, a white/black confusion as the ordnance he hadn't been able to fire exploded.

And now…heat.

His orientation systems signaled their ability to boot. Finally. It had felt like forever as the memories had unspooled from his cache. There was a strange juddering, almost like an echo, across his systems as he onlined audio, video, basic 4D orientation. Disturbing. But he'd never been this injured before and the sensorblock they'd used—and it must have been one PIT of a sensor block since he couldn't feel a slagging thing—might have been responsible.

"Ungh," he said, his vocalizer onlining before his optics could resolve down to anything smaller than a four-pixel grid. He felt…weird. His voice seemed to echo in his audio. Over the strange hum-click of machinery—not the comforting even tone of repair bay, but something else, a higher pitch. He couldn't seem to feel his vocalizer. Vision slowly resolved until he could see Mindwipe looking from him to…him. As if he were in two different places.

"Sky…stalker," the mech said, hesitantly. Behind him, Skystalker could recognize—with a shock of trepidation that grated down his sensornet—Flatline. Flatline was not a repair bot. He was a scientist. Which meant…Skystalker was science.

Skystalker bolted upright, his vision slewing wildly. His optic swung around the room—taking in Flatline, the bank of monitors, Mindwipe, and…himself. Over there. Looking at him. Except not himself—not his previous brightly colored, large frame, laden with bomb racks, yellow and purple stripes over his ammunition reserves. The thing that was him, looking at a him that was also him, was tiny, dull, matte black, birdlike. Weak. This was not him. This could not be him. What the frag had happened?

"I think he's figured it out," Flatline said, blandly. "Perhaps you'd do better to explain to him."

Mindwipe shifted uncomfortably, his backswept wings twitching. "Skystalker," he began. His face fuzzed, confused. "Right?" Skystalker nodded impatiently. "You were seriously injured and…this was done to save you." Mindwipe looked over his shoulder at Flatline for some signal of approval. "And I'm here, to…?" Another look back to Flatline, this one worried.

Skystalker felt his systems—so recently onlined—cycle up to fury. Worry? What for? What was going on? Why did he look so different? He trembled on the edge of an outburst.

"Mindwipe is familiar with some of the changes to your aerial style," Flatline said, smoothly. "He shall work with you until you accommodate to your new abilities."

"What was slaggin' wrong with my old abilities!" Skystalker burst out, his voice echoing from the doubled source.

"Your repaired systems are incompatible with offensive armaments."

"Well then get me DIFFERENT systems!" He saw himself like a mirror image, pathetically small claws bunching into aggressive fists. The effect was laughable. Only he wasn't in the mood to laugh. He was…useless. Tiny. Probably get tripped over walking down the hall.

"Systems interfacing," Flatline said, coldly, "are the best that could be managed from the damage. Perhaps if you could manage, next time, NOT to get yourself so thoroughly blown up…?" There was a hostile glint in Flatline's optics.

Skystalker shook with rage—both of him.

Mindwipe stepped in. "We'll talk about that later," he said, insincerely. "Point is that, uhhh, right now this is your frame and you should try to get used to its abilities while you can." He looked confused, shook it off. "It'll, it'll help you later because you'll have a new skillset to take to combat."

"New abilities," Skystalker snorted. "Like what? Getting stepped on?"

Flatline chuffed, but said nothing, folding his arms over his chassis.

Mindwipe glanced among them—both Skystalkers and Flatline. "You don't even know until you try," he said, earnestly.

Skystalker rolled his optic—only one per, he noticed, with a fury that felt he had been shorted. "Platitudes? That's what you have for me?" Frag this, he thought, angrily. He clambered off the repair cradle. It was…hard to manage. Because each of…HIM had to move independently. He felt Flatline's optics on him, with the curious cold detachment of a scientist—Mindwipe's were filled with a kind of sympathy. He didn't know which he hated more.

He finally found a way to stop one of him while he faced the challenges of the other, and then reverse. Stop one: Lower the other's legs over the edge of the cradle, push back. Stop that one, repeat for the other. It felt…stupid. Weak. Impossible to manage. He glared up—both of him—at Flatline, hating how much UP he had to look. "This," he snapped, gesturing at himself. "This is unmanageable."

"The Autobot femme managed it just fine," Flatline said, superciliously. A blatant challenge mixed with an insult.

Skystalker seethed, two pairs of hands curling into fists.

"I think," Mindwipe said, suddenly, "we should go back to quarters."

"Back to…with you?"

"You have been assigned to me, yes." Mindwipe looked to Flatline for confirmation.

"Unless," Flatline said, "you find walking too difficult. In which case you can stay here. OR, Mindwipe might condescend to carry you."

Skystalker snarled, at both of them, and pushed past them to the exit. His movements were precisely coordinated—left foot, right foot—but he still had problems with self-location—his left one whanged its arm panel hard into the door frame. So much for a dignified exit.

**

Mindwipe woke up in the middle of recharge, hearing a strange noise. The HUD memory alarm he had set prompted him: 'Skystalker'. Skystalker? The harrier? Here?

It came back to him slowly. Skystalkers. Plural. With him. His mission. He felt a small rise of relief. He had remembered. He had not forgotten. Now all he had to do was try not to have to complete that part of the mission.

"Skystalker," he said, his voice rippling through the darkness.

"What?" the doubled voice, impatient.

"You are uneasy?"

"Wouldn't you be?" Hostile.

"Yes." Well, he thought he would. If he was remembering correctly. It must be unsettling. Almost as unsettling as having a faulty short-term memory. "Can I do something?" Probably not. Not really. Stupid thing to even ask. And…just opening up for a smart remark.

"You can do your, you know, thing on me." Voice now bitter.

"It's not so bad, is it?" Mindwipe didn't think his orders covered the mech's request. Only if he was unstable. If he was able to formulate a request, was he unstable?

"Shut up. Like you'd fraggin' know."

"I don't know." Mindwipe pulled himself to the edge of the berth. A small berth had been set up in his recharge, and the two Skystalkers were huddled together on it, two red optics glaring at him. "And if I did know, I might have forgotten."

"The frag is wrong with you, anyway?"

Mindwipe gave a humorless snort of laughter. "Short term memory cache is outside the cortex's protections." To prevent him from…well, wiping himself, his main cortex was encased in a plasma well as well as a faraday cage. He remembered that. He must have heard that many, many times.

"So like…you can't turn it off?"

"It's never really 'off'. Just that the solenoids aren't running live current." Hence, the damage.

"So…anyone getting too close to you?"

"Probably have some short term memory loss." Mindwipe frowned. Not probably. Made it more than a little lonely. And weird. His few rare attempts at interfacing, his partner had forgotten about almost immediately after. Which had led to some hilarious and not-so-hilarious moments. Still, it wounded the ego—he still did have one of those, you know—to be so…forgettable. And he'd forgotten most of them himself…sometimes mid interface. But the repetition of such humiliations had worn a groove that he could remember. Not specific names and faces; more like a general knowing that it would not go well.

The two red optics of the Skystalkers swiveled up to him. "That then," they said. "Please. Just to…dull the present." The brashness, the hostility were gone. Only raw pain. Only a naked fear of the present. Hatred of what he had become. Mindwipe hesitated. No one had wanted that to happen before. No one had wanted to be with him before.

Not that he could remember.

He logged this into his hard-data, gesturing for the small air frames to join him. He thought he remembered they were a little self conscious about their size. He lay out awkwardly along the berth, twitching as the small limbs clambered over him. He lay rigid, uncomfortable, as the Skystalkers draped themselves over him—one squarely over his chassis, the other wedged between his chassis and his arm.

"Better?" he croaked. He was…discomfited by the unfamiliar sensation. No mech had ever corecharged with him. Not that he remembered. And he trusted his body to remember more than his cortex.

"Yeah," the twinned voices were soft. No hard edge on them at all. He heard their systems cycling down into standby, the limbs going slack against him. He could feel the gentle vibration of their EM fields brushing against his. It felt…nice.

Remember this, he told himself, desperately. Remember how this feels. Please.

***

He hadn't expected the Skystalkers to be particularly grateful. He didn't remember until he'd jerked away at his chrono chime, startling one of them into digging nervous claws into his armor seams. And his yellow memory alarm had once again prompted him , 'Skystalker'. How did this happen? He didn't remember, but the two small planes were curled up around his chassis. His hard data pinged him. Oh.

"Frag," they said.

"Chrono," Mindwipe said, apologetically. "Shift cycle starts."

"Slaggin' great for you. What am I—we—supposed to do?" The small planes looked at each other. Mindwipe could see the frustration, not only in the notion that they were getting pushed aside, but that they didn't know how to refer to themselves. Himself. Slag, Mindwipe didn't know, either.

Mindwipe checked his duty roster. He'd been cleared to 'rehabilitate Skystalker'. Rehabilitate him for what? Oh. Right. Skystalker. Plural. New frame. Only problem was…Mindwipe had no idea what to do.

"I, uh, we," there, that was a safe pronoun, "can start working to get you comfortable in your new frames."

"How are WE going to do that?" Skystalker sneered. They moved as mirror images. Well, there was a place to start.

"Get up and go stand," Mindwipe gestured vaguely, "over there."

Skystalker grumbled, but managed—periodically having to resort to freezing one of himself down while the other did something complex—to get to where Mindwipe had pointed. "Now what?" he said, belligerently. Furious at the effort it had taken to do such a simple task.

Mindwipe set up a visual tag. The one on the left he designated Sky, the other Stalker. "All right, both of you, march in place." Well, they could opticroll with absolute coordination, Mindwipe noticed, but they complied, legs lifting in perfect synchrony. "Hard to do?"

"Not…really," Skystalker said.

"All right, now…," one advantage to having a bad short term memory cache was that he'd gotten decently skilled at improvising on the spot. Normally it was to cover up things he was afraid to admit he didn't remember, "Keep marching but only one of you answer my questions."

"Fi-fine," The first half of the word came out doubled. He could see the effort of concentration to cut the vocalizer down to one of them. Sky, his heads up tag told him.

Well, slag. Now he had to think of some questions. He blurted, "What do you remember?" before he could consider the wisdom of it.

"I remember," another struggle to keep Sky as the only voice. "the crash. How well the mission had been going." Two optics looked down at his marching limbs. "I remember…not looking like this."

Mindwipe remembered that, too. "Yellow and purple, right?"

"Yeah." The small planes looked down in dismay at their drab black armor. "This is ugly."

"Is it?" Mindwipe looked at his own matte black plates. He'd never thought about it. He'd take Sky's word for it.

"Not—not that ugly," both voices blurted. "It's just," Stalker said, slipping off gait, "it's not us, you know?" Oh. Well, that made sense. MIndwipe imagined that it was quite a change to go from being quite so brightly colored. Weird how that bothered them.

"Your under-plating is still purple," he said, helpfully. "That's something." Slag, he was no good at this. All he'd gotten was two mechs marching in place phasing in and out of sequence with each other. He added a note to his HUD: 'rehabilitation'. That would help. He hoped. If he remembered this. He remembered who they were: that was a step. But they weren't as he'd remembered them. When had they come in?

"I guess," Sky muttered. "Nice purple smears of paint on them when they kick me."

"Size doesn't matter," Mindwipe said. Blinked. He had a vague feeling that was not the right thing to say.

"Do you know anything BUT stupid sayings like that?" At least the voice kept to Sky this time.

"Not really," Mindwipe admitted. "Not much that makes it into LTM. I can log things I really want to remember, but that's generally only facts. Not sensory data unless quantifiable, and nuances kind of get lost and…." He cut himself off. Babbling like an idiot. Skystalker—both of him—had stopped moving, staring at him. "Sorry," he said, lamely. He found himself looking forward to when he'd forget this little moment.

"Slag," Sky said. "How do you function?"

"Huh? Oh. The memory thing." Mindwipe shrugged. "I fake it a lot. Pretend I know what's going on." Like…now. He scanned his HUD: 'rehabilitation'. Right. "You should be doing something—how about one of you walk in place and the other does like…arm circles or something."

The two little planes looked at each other, but began obeying—Sky began moving his legs, Stalker the arms. The movements were jerky, unstable, at first, but after a few moments developed a rhythm. Mindwipe could see some confidence growing. Confidence for…oh, rehabilitation. Right. "Isn't it depressing?" Stalker asked. One voice.

"The…memory thing?" Mindwipe shrugged. "If I think about it, probably." One positive of a bad STM is that he didn't remember what there was to be depressed about. Often. "It's part of my systems design, so…you know. Get used to it."

"I think I'd go crazy. Frag, this—" Sky and Stalker pointed at each other, "is driving me crazy."

"That's not so bad, really. I mean, at least you don't get lonely?" Mindwipe had a bad feeling that he'd said something wrong again.

Sky snorted, shaking his head. But he didn't seem irritated as much as Mindwipe thought he remembered. Stalker asked, "Don't you get lonely?"

Mindwipe faltered, feeling a strange push in his cortex as if something was trying to come through. "Yes," he heard himself say, his tone sad. "But," he added, "the good thing is, I forget all about it." It didn't feel like a good thing though.

The two shifted—the other one moving arms and legs. "So…you've interfaced, right? How does that work?"

A laugh he wished sounded funnier. It probably was funny. "It doesn't work so well. Either I forget what's going on halfway through or they do and the good news is by the next solar I've definitely forgotten any details. Sometimes I'm like…looking at dents and scratches and have no idea how I got them."

"You might have been forced?"

"Maybe." He'd never thought about that. It might have explained a few things. "Does it count if neither of us remember it?"

"Frag," Sky breathed. "maybe I shouldn't complain."

"It must be disquieting," Mindwipe murmured, "to remember being one thing while being something different. Just because it's different than mine doesn't make it any less upsetting."

"How long has it been since you interfaced?"

A shrug. "Long time. At least a long time since I last logged a 'mysterious injury' or 'lingering pain across systems' into hard data."

Sky and Stalker looked over at each other and then back to him. They'd stopped moving. Mindwipe was just about to have to think up some new instructions for them when they both stepped forward, lockstep, closing the distance to where he sat on the edge of the berth. Standing they were almost at his seated height. One reached up and grabbed his audio finial, pulling his head down, his mouth scraping against Mindwipe's startled face. Systems he didn't remember all that well fired on—his arms clutched around the smaller mechs, his mouth parting against the insistent beak-like mouth on his, Stalker on freeze behind him. A small glossa intruded into his mouth cavity, forceful, pushy, inflaming him with an unfamiliar sensation. He felt small claws stroke at his armor, teasing his stomach plating, under the heavy plates of his thigh armor. He shivered. Had he ever felt this before or not?

He should be doing something, shouldn't he? His hands drifted to one of the mechs, lifting the wingplates on their ball joints, his fingers stroking along the exposed undersides. The mech—Stalker, he thought, whimpered, the wingspan trembling under his touch. He pulled away. "What you want?" How had this started? He wasn't sure.

"Yeah," Sky said, tipping his small head into Mindwipe's throat, the mouth eager on his fragile cables. He'd been used to getting what and who he wanted, before. Big, brash, flashy, with attitude and ability to back it up, Mindwipe remembered. Skystalker, the old one, the one of him, had been…popular. And now…? Mindwipe feared that might be a harsh adjustment for the twin mechs. Harsher than controlling two bodies. Harsher than no weapons. Harsher, even, than the diminutive frame. "What you want?"

"Yes?" He wasn't sure. But it didn't feel wrong or bad. It felt distantly familiar.

Stalker clambered onto the berth behind him nipping along the backswept wings as Sky subsided into stillness. Slowly, slowly getting better at switching functionality.

Mindwipe whimpered himself at the delicate pinches along his wings. His hands trembled against Sky, whose little beaklike mouth began nuzzling along his shoulder cabling. This should feel wrong, shouldn't it? But smaller mechs had larger mechs all the time—Barricade and Blackout, for example. That wasn't weird. It wasn't the size. Well then…what?

Oh.

"We'll both just forget this," he murmured, sadly. His module pinged readiness. Forget? It had no memory. No higher function at all beyond its own goals. Relentless pursuit. Singleminded. Mindwipe couldn't compete—his own cortex was too scattered, fragmented. Blurred with mosaics of memory. He heard a soft, yearning sound in his own vocalizer, his hands skittering down Sky's offset legs.

"We won't forget," Stalker murmured from behind him, the voice like silk in his audio. "I'm behind the solenoids right now and," the two small mechs gave a soft stereophonic laugh, "I can sit this out while…I enjoy it." Little arms wrapped around his neck from behind. "Besides. Not good enough to control both of me. Yet."

"Why?"

"Because I want to. Because maybe it'll make me feel like some part of me is normal."

Mindwipe nodded. Normal. Wouldn't it be nice?

Sky picked up the unanswered question. "Why you?" The little shoulders shrugged, the wing panels shifting restlessly under Mindwipe's hands. "You're here. Frag it, you can't judge me. You'd forget anyway." A mirthless laugh. Mindwipe bowed his head. Yes. True.

"I wouldn't judge you. It is hard to adapt to…something you didn't ask for." Probably another cliché, but one that struck him in his own core. He'd never wanted this ability. Never wanted to pay this high a price for his service to the cause. His body was enough—that was what was expected of every Decepticon. He had given his mind. His memories. His identity.

The little claws dug fiercely into him, one red optic earnestly seeking out his. "We're both…." Damaged? Ruined? Mindwipe couldn't find the right word either. But he could feel the intensity from Sky, and Stalker behind him.

"I…I won't remember," Mindwipe said, softly. He felt his interface systems blazing at him, blissfully not caring. Only he cared, and only for now. This was strange and precious and rare and he knew he would lose this and it hurt in ways he couldn't describe.

"If we do it enough times, you will," Sky, a bit of Skystalker's old fire in his tone, laughed against his mouth.

****


End file.
